LikeBuster uses the amazing power of JavaScript and basic regular expression matching to proactively remove items in your news feed that are only there because someone is paying Facebook money to spam you. Most Facebook users would agree that this is obnoxious.
LikeBuster is in continuous release, but currently experimental.
The extension originally just found all passive stories (non status updates) that include the term "like" in the story header, and removes that story from your news feed by deleting that DOM element. It's a greedy approach, and it could be improved. Improvements are listed in the release notes below.
Future iterations of this extension will (possibly) include:
- A blacklist approach tracking a registry of undesirable sources
- Configurable blocking
- Proactive notifications that a story has been blocked
- Download the zip file and extract it
- Put it someplace you don't mind keeping it
- In Chrome, click on the wrench in the upper right-hand corner, and select "extensions"
- Make sure "developer mode" is clicked
- Click "load unpacked extension", and select the folder you unzipped
- Restart Chrome
To tell that it's working, open Chrome back up and press Ctrl+Shift+i (Apple+Shift+i for Macs). This opens your JavaScript console.
Now, navigate to Facebook and start scrolling. If you run into a like spam ad or a sponsored story, something went wrong. LikeBuster logs to your JavaScript console every time it removes a spammy story.
You can skip this process by going to the add-on page. It's highly likely Firefox's version will be out of date faster, since it's slightly less accommodating towards experimental extensions.
- Download the zip file and extract it
- Drag the likebuster-for-firefox.xpi onto an open Firefox browser window. This should automatically cause the add-on to install.
To tell that it's working, go to Tools > Web Developer > Web Console or type Ctrl+Alt+K. This opens your JavaScript console.
Now, navigate to Facebook and start scrolling. If you run into a like spam ad or a sponsored story, something went wrong. LikeBuster logs to your JavaScript console every time it removes a spammy story.
- Now hiding "similar to" content below links people post to your news feed.
- Now hiding stories originating from Tumblr (reblogs, photo likes, etc.)
- Now removes BuzzFeed links, per feature request by Corioliss
- Remove recently released albums (not another music recommendation service. enough feature creep, guys)
- Remove share footer, which is pretty obnoxious
- Remove "megaphone" above status update, which so far is only telling me to buy people Starbucks gift cards
- Remove any story with " like " in the headline. If you like it, I probably don't want to see it.
- Remove "upcoming concerts" story from news feed.
- Now hiding all things other people like, since spammier likes get pushed into your news feed more often than informative likes.
- Improved logging in console
- Sped up initial round of LikeBusts by not waiting for document.ready event
- Now hiding "suggested events". Who wanted that in the first place?
- Fixed bug where "claimed an offer" text was also found in h5.uiStreamPassive
- Removing Pinterest spam
- Calling LikeBuster only on Facebook.com domain for improved performance The next version of the Firefox extension rev 20 contains both this release and the prior
- Now removing Spotify spam
- Now removing all "shared" stories (please contact the author if you have a problem with this; eventually we will be able to customize this kind of stuff a lot better)
- Now removing "re-blogging" stories (e.g. So-and-so via such-and-such: (link))
- Now removing new kind of spam, alerting you that something you like added a link to their timeline. NOTE: These features will be added to Firefox in a later release.
- Included license, added in Firefox add-on.
- Added support for passive stories tagged as sponsored campaigns with variable predicates
- Added support for hiding claimed offers
- Updated regex to leave sharing and liking of non-sponsored info alone
- Initial release